Theft At The Wanamaker, Kempton & Southern Railroad

And what is really sad is that it was one of their own volunteers who did the stealing.

Alleged theft from a volunteer organization AND he plead guilty to engaging in kiddie porn? The textbook definition of a scumbag.

Remember this face...

James Krause, Schnecksville, PA

thieft goes on all over. Got a friend that sells HO scale trains at shows. He went to a show out in the mid west. Had 4 brass cabooses on top shelf of his display. some guy was looking at them. he went to help another customer. when he turned around, the cabooses were gone along with the guy.

As a retired CPA, CFO I saw this over and over in my career especially in small organizations and clubs.  I preach constantly that when it comes to money you cannot trust anyone person with the money.  You must have checks and balances and monthly oversight of those handling the money and books.  Sad but that is the way life is.  Anyone who objects to being reviewed needs to be replaced.

Ditto to the above...has happened in the Girl Scouts (with their cookie money), and

other charitable organizations...thieves abound, and we don't have the London docks.

This is just sad now noone will ever trust this guy ever.No one in the hobby or outside the hobby.All I can say he brought it on himself.I hope people in clubs large and small take heed from this.

Well, that would certainly be appropriate, wouldn't you think?

What is just about as disturbing in that whole mess is, didn't somebody, ANYBODY, notice what this scumbag was doing for such a long time? Just who is "in charge" of that nonprofit operation, i.e. who audits the books?

Well like I stated what he did was wrong.Its a fact you have people like that around.Thats just the way it is.But you raise a good queston about who in charge of the books?

This really is discouraging news.  Seems like all the hard work the volunteers have put in only to have someone steal the results of their work.

i can see how this happens. Especially in a non-profit organization.  This particular organization provides a great and entertaining  train experience for lots of people.  it takes lots of vision to do something like this.  It tends to create a lot of trust among the folks involved.  The assumption is that everyone shares the same passion for the purpose.  Unfortunately it is that trust that makes this kind of theft possible. 

It has been my unfortunate experience that when some people are given unrestricted access to money then bad things happen. I have a friend who owns a business. Approximately 25 years ago, a woman showed up at the business in desperate need of a job.  He made a place for her and she eventually became responsible for receiving money and paying the bills. She also became a part of their family.   She never took more that a couple of days off.  Well she got sick and was out for 3 weeks so my friend's daughter jumped in do the money part.  She very quickly realized that there was a fairly sizable discrepancy with the money to the tune of about 300k going back 10 years.  The temptation just got to great for this woman.   Needless to say she got arrested, etc.

As others have said, this org needs greater controls, yearly audits and such. 

I just hope they can recover from this theft and that it does not dampen the volunteer's spirit.  Such a shame, good people doing good things and they get robbed.

Ed